Providing advertising to consumers has long been the subject of much research, especially in how to best provide appropriate advertising to the relevant consumer market. For example, a manufacturer selling automobiles would not likely be well satisfied when such advertising is only provided on a children's channel. Since both the interest and market power of children for such a product would be low. Further, certain demographic markets within the country have different desires for goods and services. Therefore, even during certain prime time hours, the same advertising might yield greater or lesser success depending upon the region of the country in which the advertising is actually run.
Much research has shown that when advertising is customized to individual markets, and even to individual viewers, that the response to such advertising is much greater. Since advertisers continually search for the most efficient way to spend advertising dollars, a tremendous need exists to ensure that particular advertisements are served to an audience that is most likely to respond favorably to such advertisements.
Network television over the years has attempted to target its advertisement based upon the potential viewers for a particular program at a particular hour. However, with the advent of cable television, and the local and regional markets that are served by individual cable operators, the potential exists to provide advertisement that is much more targeted to the individuals within a particular cable system. Distribution of programming and advertisement occurs through a set top box, which is connected, directly to the viewer's television. These set top boxes have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, such that they now contain both processing capability and memory for storage of instructions and other content.
What would therefore be truly useful is a system and method that uses the capabilities of the set top box to receive and manage, together with the cable operator's server operations, advertisements that are presented to individual viewers or groups of users. Thus, a more targeted advertising campaign can be offered to merchants desiring to reach a more appropriate audience with their advertisements and advertising budgets.